


Ashes of Time (under rework)

by LaughingMcNugget



Series: Mother [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, F/M, In the process of a rework, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:51:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5997634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingMcNugget/pseuds/LaughingMcNugget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Risen from the ashes of time, the Sole Survivor of vault 111 takes the first shaky steps into a new and fearsome world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes of Time (under rework)

By some stretch of the grim imagination, Shaun had seen the rise and fall of a leader, and the creation of a new one. At 25, the man had been shoved into an authoritative position above the workers, his stunning intellect a catalyst to make up for his lacking years. The young man was a prodigy by almost every stretch of the word, brilliance in the fields he studied, charm and etiquette around his elders (though by effect he outranked them and their opinions were moot), a wit sharp as a tack and bold as the white walls in contrast to the Commonwealth filth. His only failure was with the synths. More specifically, the X0-60 unit known as Mother to the synth population. In the frightful year of the former Director’s passing, Shaun had become nearly manic in his hyper perception of mortality. For days the Director wouldn’t sleep, driven by divine need to find the perfect filler for his role, as he would no doubt leave this world the same way his predecessor did. The same way his father and mother had. It was a shame, and the man often slumped over his terminal, mourning the parents he never got to know and never would be able to, lost to the same clutches as the old Director. They had perished in the terrible chill of the cryo-vault, and only he had been spared of it icy clutch. Was this a life he would be happy with, living out his days with the sterility and monotony of life in the Institute? Doomed to be dragged through his life and into old age never knowing but the walls and the stretching, reaching, and never ending white halls? Never knowing how to act around a child should he have one, because his parents had died and he’d been raised by robotic beings? He often found, in the late nights of confusion and fear, that he wanted his mother, if only for her wisdom. In the trying days he wished he had his father for support. He set about, rounding patrols and scouts of the new generation three synths to fetch the body of his mother for what would, unbeknownst to him, be his greatest failure. Five years of painstakingly growing the perfect replication of his mother, and the planting party never returned, the hard fought, specially made courser was lost and locked in the frozen depths of vault 111. Lost to the years and the crumbling heart of the Director.

All until the sirens wailed

“It’s so cold, Nate, turn on the heater…” Nicole mumbled, stretching her limbs and making to kick one leg out to prod at her husband’s rump.

The extended leg was met with a metallic clang and a sudden downfall of icy water shaken loose from the strike. Of all the times for the roof to leak, it had to be now, and right over the bed too. Earthy eyes hazed back into a state of clarity, and the woman realized she’d slept with her eyes open. Wide open.

She never did that, and her eyes ached with the cold as a consequence.

That would explain why she didn’t feel all that rested, she’d slept wrong and just needed to flop over in bed and call the early morning a sick day. She attempted to roll, and found her shoulder crashing against something freezing and metal. A sharp intake had the bitter, stinging , stale air cycling through her lungs and fogging in the cold. Her claustrophobia was familial, and it seized her chest quickly. Numb and frantic fingers pressed forwards against whatever metallic _thing_ was in front of her at the moment, at the touch, it hissed away. Sirens came into earshot when the frosty door peeled away from where she had been resting, if you could count that as resting. With a wet, sloppy sound, the woman fell to her knees, icy water dripping from her form and onto the concrete ground. There was a quiet moment where the sensory returned to her chilled mind and frozen body, a stretch of time spanning the planes of ice across her suit. Then it hit, all at once it hit. This wasn’t her house. These weren’t her clothes. This didn’t seem like Heaven or Hell, so where was she?

Where was she?

Where was Shaun?

Where was Nate?

Another door hissed open, one after another in the row of pods like the one she’d popped out of. People were in them, maybe they’d know where she was. Maybe Nate was here too, she only hoped Nate was here too.

That’s when the bodies fell, face first, onto the floor. The sounds of crunching and shattering and the splintering of frozen skin flying out in all directions sent her clawing up the pod opposite to get off the floor. Terror gripped her as the slick metal had her slip, and grab instead on something soft and cold. A body tipped forward when she’d tried to pull herself up with it, soft black hair and pale white skin, the torn ear and the broken nose.  Bitter bile rose in her throat at the sight. The sight made her feel cold as death. Maybe she had died after all.

Maybe this was Hell.

“Nate? Nate wake up!” she had her tiny hands on his shoulders, tipping the frozen carcass back and forth trying to wake up someone she knew wasn’t going to .

He was only asleep, just like she had been.

She couldn’t be the only one who’d survived, the odds were against that. Then again, the odds were against her waking up at all. She couldn’t be alone.

A flash of movement made her hopeful. Maybe another person had woken up like she had, and they could find out what happened together, they could help Nate. She saw the flicker of movement again, and it seemed a bit too fast, a bit too low, to be human. Something chittered down the hall, the sound of hard chitin scraping against wet concrete. Something skittered up the wall. Something big and brown fell just before her and started scrapping at the frozen bodies. Nicole remained stock still, watching the… the giant bug tear away frozen chunks of flesh with its pinchers, watching it eat her neighbors-her friends. It seems that while she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t in friendly company either.

“What…” it hadn’t meant to slip past her still numb lips. It hadn’t meant to be loud enough for the enormous roach to hear.

But it slipped out all the same, but it heard the same, and the creature skittered on spot to face her. Its antenna twitched, long and flicking like T.V. rabbit ears as it assessed her.  Then it chittered something like a hiss and lunged at her, delving its pinchers into her ankle and making her drop Nate’s corpse in the rush to bat off the bug. The bug was forgotten when the stiff corpse toppled forward, and the face she’d dreamed of waking up next to for years was shattered into shards of dark red and stark white against the wet concrete.  As though it were his final act of protecting her, Nate’s broken corpse smashed the bug under its weight. The door to his pod hissed shut on its own. The sirens went quiet. Silence then filled the room, eerie silence that she drowned in like a rotten shot of Med-x, and that was only shattered by the sounds of dripping water. Her legs went week, knees knocking together and only staying upright by the grips on her shoes. What else was there to do but sit, body still wobbly and freezing, and wait for life to end. Surely that wasn’t the only bug. Surely another would come along and finish her off. Leave her scattered in a million pieces like her husband, like her baby. Oh god, Shaun, she hadn’t seen the corpse of her child draped in his father’s arms like they had been frozen. He fell, he slid like the chunk of ice those damn Vault-Tec _bastards_ had turned him into, and she was denied even the closure of seeing the little boy she almost died bringing into the world one last time. She wanted to scream for her child, to scream for anyone to help her, but all that came out was a hazed, weary sigh resembling the baby’s name. She lurched forward, one numb leg after the other, looking for the corpse of her son scattered among those of her neighbors.

He wouldn’t be here. Something distant, a very faint memory lost in a veil of shimmering ice told her that he was taken by people that she didn’t know. They must have known that most wouldn’t make it from this frozen deathtrap. They may have rescued him but she still had to find them. To find him. He was _hers_. What if he wasn’t safe anymore? If those were just bugs; bugs that were the size of housecats, who knows what other dangers her baby was exposed to?

Another sopping step forward had a foot on the stairs, and her tense and shaking body barely had enough energy to power through the first step. Never mind the other three she had to climb. Something about the vault she was in struck her memories as it being a long walk.

There were probably more bugs.

God, who knows what else was out there besides bugs?

The old saying ‘Only roaches and top ramen can survive a nuclear war’ overtook her in a wave of anxiety, and made her fall to her knees “What if only roaches survived. I could never live in a world full of only cat sized roaches.” Her voice was beyond worry and fear, only exasperation at the thought of a bug ruled planet.

The sheer concept almost made her want to give up, to crawl back into one of those pods and wait for the frosty and peaceful end to come. 

“Shaun. You have to find Shaun.”  It was breathy, ice still chilling her vocal chords and making all noise only more than a whisper to break the silence of the vault.

Nicole warily beat a fist against her chest, the pain and the shock jarring her from the morose state of mind. She had a baby to find. She knew the people to look for. Bald man with a beat up face, lady in a lab coat.

 

Something about remembering the bald man made her upset. Fanned a flame in her chest like vengeance because he- she stopped in her tracks, a hand folding over the sudden, angry pounding of her heart- Nate had been shot by the bald man. He might have lived to be with her when the whole world fell apart _again_ and that man-that _bastard_ shot him! He would be the one to track down first. To find him and watch just as she had been forced to as his brains blew out of his skull. Nate had always warned her about that petty vengeance getting the best of her someday, now full blown and righteous fury driven. Nicole fell to her knees, at a loss for how to find the damned killer. A dog. A dog is what she needed for that. Or a detective. Maybe there would be one of either willing to help her track the bald psychopath down. Or at least make it so she wasn’t left in a world of giant bugs.

Too much sidetracking, she gave her head a shake, and her dyed red hair tousled about, still sticky and wet from the ice. With a huff, she moved forwards again, at the top of the stairs and turning down the halls. That’s when she saw the body. It was decomposing, mostly skeletal, and draped in a beautiful white jumper. A white jumper that looked much warmer than her simple blue suit. Hesitant hands moved around the dry and decayed body, trying to break off as few pieces of it as she could while removing the jacket, pants, and thicker boots. Her own shoes were much less likely to withstand another bite from those giant roaches. A gun toppled out from a holster strapped around its leg.

“Very useful. Makes me wish I’d shot a gun once in my fucking life.”

Still, she shook the dust from the white clothes and dressed them over her suit. Much warmer. Chances are the bugs would have a harder time biting through so many layers as well. Those damn bugs. Why bugs.

Why.

Bugs.

Nicole shook her head again, fretting about the bugs is a great way to get flustered when encountering a bug. Flustered means distracted, and distracted usually means bitten when it comes to bugs. But these weren’t little toe pinchers or mosquitos-she shuttered, the strange square-ish pistol in her hand clacking against the cement floor-mosquitos would be terrifying. Suddenly she felt very underdressed, even with the thick white outfit and the blue vault suit. If mosquitos had grown like the cockroaches had, she’d need armor. Her baby would be helpless against a dog sized mosquito…

Maybe Nate’s combat armor was still at the house.

She hissed out a weak sob, and a hand smacked across her face in response “You can cry when you’re safe.”

The holster clicked tightly around her thigh, and she had to admit that it was a comforting pressure, the kind of pressure her old dog would make when she’d lean that almost bald head of hers against her master’s thigh. A comforting thought, something good to reflect on while she paced cautiously around the corners of the cryptlike hallways, soft shoes on her feet keeping her muffled. Something stirred a pile of rubbish just a few feet from her location, and one of the giant roaches jumped out at her, snapping and flaring its wings wide as it lunged for her ankle. The square pistol was leveled at the bug, and a bolt of bright blue energy shot forward. Where the bug one was now only laid a pile of ash. Nicole let herself pause to look over the pistol, or the fucking blaster or whatever damn weapon she’d picked up. It was like it had fallen from the set of Star Wars. Nate would have loved it.

Fuck.

She hissed again, almost like static from her throat, forcing the tears back down. There was more to be done than wallow in pity while her baby was out there.

She steadied herself against the wall, one hand braced against the cool frame, the other buried under her collar and keeping count of her pulse. She wasn’t on the actual verge of a heart attack, so she should keep moving. Sound ideology for someone who had been little more than a frozen t.v. dinner for-. The thought dawned on her that she had no idea how long she’d been down there. The first body she encountered at first was dry, it must have been there for years, but now skeletons were scattered about. Maybe 15/20 years or so. The hand pressed against her neck fell to her side. 20 years most likely. Hysterics were about to set in, and the old methodical cracking of a good joke to ease the pants-peeing fear bubbled up. She hated her coping methods sometimes. A faint memory of her having to slam her hand over her mouth at a funeral because of the nervous laughter came to mind. God, that was terrible.

Another bug launched itself at her, this one flying down from the ceiling and tangling its legs in her bright red hair before being violently thrown off and splattering on the wall. Filthy little nightmare.

A few more steps forward, a skeleton was strewn on the floor, another sitting at a desk. On the desk sat a small hand gun with a box of ammo next to it.

“I should…” something told her that the boxy pistol was better, but she had no idea how many shots were left in the white and blue weapon “…Keep both.”

The little pistol felt comfortable in her left hand, and made the woman wonder if dual wielding would be something she was up to. Her aim was… much better than she thought it would be, almost like time slowed down to let her react and line up. But, it seemed like a better idea to keep the strange boxy pistol in its little strap, and brandish the 10 mil. like she were a pistol packin’ mama from the old westerns that Nate would watch.

Nate-

“Fuck-“ The butt if the pistol tapped against her temple a few times, trying to bump out the invasive thoughts “-not yet, not yet, not yet.”  

Her knees were on the floor suddenly, the pistol clacking against the tile and thankfully not going off “Make it outside. Get out of this vault… Get to the surface. The air must be old. You’re suffering from delusions-“ her breath stuck in her throat as though she’d been grabbed around the larynx.

Her hand was grabbing at the invisible fist around her throat, as though she could pry the fingers of agony and anxiousness off “Breathe Cole, breathe.”

 

The hands, one still clutching the gun, fell to her stomach, and she remembered prenatal breathing exercises to help with the horrid fluctuations of her hormones while pregnant with-

 

“…Shaun…” the tears fell now, and choking gasps made her hang her jaw for air “Shaun!”

 

The memory came back, only a bit. Nate had been killed. Nate had been shot. Shaun had been taken by the bald bastard with the scar. The pistol in his hands and the apathy on his face when she’d woken up and beat her fists weakly on the glass of her cryopod. They’d shot Nate. They took Shaun.

And she had the nerve to feel sorry for herself.

“You are a MOTHER, Cole! Pick yourself u-!”

Her dialogue was shattered by the screeching of another roach, and it dove for her left arm. The great mandibles sunk between her arm bones just below the elbow. The bug dragged its prickly legs down her arm and backed up, tearing down her forearm and chittering at the scent of fresh meat. Nicole shrieked, and swung her arm outward in an attempt to dislodge the roach, only making the split in her arm travel further down and the lights suddenly seem a little bit dimmer. Her right hand, balled in a fist, came down on the bug’s carapace and smashed it in. The bug let out a cry that was almost pitiful, mandible flying open, little legs waggling and scrabbling on the spot as she pinned it there with an embedded fist. It died slowly, looking at the beast who’d impaled it. She looked at it as it died, her own life seeming to bleed out from the long, see through gash. Her left arm was useless, bloody and useless. With her right hand, now covered in roach goo, the woman stripped the thick white material away from the wound. An end of the bloody strip was in her mouth, the other straining as she wrapped it tightly around her upper elbow. She had to live. She had to find Shaun. It all seemed to hopeless to even try, maybe she should just lay down and die…

Maybe this is why the bald man was so apathetic.

She stood up, left arm limp and useless. There went the idea of dual wielding. She collected the 10 mil. In her right hand and dumped the ammo box into one of the white jumper’s pockets. Five more steps forward, her legs felt shaky, and blood was steadily dripping from the snapped something in her wrist. The nice white suit was now, in her opinion, dripping with a lovely shade of red that she could have enjoyed much more had it not been making the edges of her vision creep inward with a foggy black. Red was always her favorite color, but not like this…

“Gonna find him, Nate.”

She was staggering now, a grated control panel in the dust-thick beam of light. It looked like Heaven shone down on the computer and the smaller console glinting a friendly yellow against the grey.  She knew that thing. It was something like Nate had bought for her. A pip-boy. She slumped to her knees into the pile of garbage that the- Nicole found herself gagging. The pip-boy was still worn by a dusty skeleton, draped in a tattered lab coat and mildew-y from the steady leak of filthy water that ran under the grated railway. The tech was familiar enough with her to know she needed the little computer access the terminal a few feet away from her. It would be a lot easier if she just… could think without being so light headed…

“Gonna find him-“ she’d fallen forward, one shoulder banging hard against the handrail, as her one good hand fumbled with the arm bones still caught in the pip-boy’s casing.

The little plug, that’s what she needed to pull out. ‘Only a little more. Maybe there will be help outside. Just keep going.’ The inner mantra felt more useless, she felt more helpless each time it repeated with slightly more static in her head. She was so tired, so cold. The panel flipped up, and in a dazed blur, the woman crawled into the central platform of the vault, rising slowly into the gloriously warm light of day as it ascended. A few feet, she kept pushing a few feet by a few feet. Under her hand and knees was the grated stairs of a trailer, and hidden inside a white box was a little syringe that was divine grace in a vial. The wound knit together in a mere few seconds, the muscle and meat twining into a solid wall before the skin scarred deep purple over the cut. Nicole tested the limb, fingertips regaining their sensation as the flow stinted.

“Easy, slow breaths. Remember what V' taught you.” She leaned heavily against the doorframe now, staring out at the barren wastes that had once been her lush neighborhood.

Gone.

It was all destroyed.

Maybe this was Hell.


End file.
